Walking and Cycling
Greener Micromobility
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
18 June 2024
- Micromobility is becoming greener. Aside from walking, cycling remains the most environmentally friendly way of moving around cities. Electrification has further expanded the distances cyclists can travel. Shared micromobility has made significant progress in terms of sustainability as operators have addressed the impacts of their fleets and operations on the environment. Leasing models are particularly attractive from a lifecycle environmental impact perspective.
- Shared fleet vehicle design has reduced lifecycle impacts. The rapid uptake of improved vehicle designs in shared fleets has steeply reduced per-rider-kilometre greenhouse gas emissions. Longer vehicle lifetimes, enabled by more robust design, greater modularity and ease of repair, have driven reductions in impact across the lifecycle.
- Fleet servicing operations have significantly improved. Swappable, higher-capacity batteries have reduced the impact of fleet recharging, enabled the use of less impactful cargo bikes and fostered more efficient fleet servicing models. Improved fleet logistics, including maintenance, repair and re-positioning have contributed to greener operations. Electrification of fleet servicing vans also matters, but to a lesser extent.
Improving the Quality of Walking and Cycling in Cities
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
14 February 2024
- Overcome car-centric thinking. Decades of car-centric development have made its assumptions the unquestioned norm. As a result of this “moto-normativity”, risks and harms from motor vehicles may be accepted when they are unacceptable in other contexts. Many cities have begun to question this approach.
- Think beyond infrastructure. Focusing on infrastructure is not enough to ensure pedestrians and cyclists will feel safe and secure and enjoy walking and cycling. Policies must also target street violence, social disadvantage and other factors.
- Redesign planning processes. Processes for transport investments have traditionally prioritised car-centric options. A vision-led approach can provide the basis for redesigning these processes, and help ensure active travel contributes to more inclusive, sustainable cities. Work in progress across a number of cities worldwide suggests such a shift is possible.
Transit-Oriented Development and Accessibility: Case studies from Southeast Asian cities
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
8 October 2023
- Ensure sufficient availability of public transport and infrastructure for active modes.
- Integrate transport planning with land use planning for co-ordinated implementation of measures.
- Embrace disruptive mobility trends in ways that ensure improved accessibility.
- Collect more and better-quality data on urban mobility to underpin transit-oriented development.
- Learn from international experiences with transit-oriented development and apply them locally.
Shifting the Focus: Smaller Electric Vehicles for Sustainable Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
26 September 2023
- Shift the focus of policies that promote electric vehicles to end the dependency on large, under-used vehicles.
- Help make smaller electric vehicles an attractive choice for citizens.
- Ensure the transition to smaller electric vehicles goes in hand with adequate safety provisions.
- Fast-track the electrification of shared mobility services in complement with public transport.
- Ensure the availability of enough charging points to make electric mobility attractive.
Accessibility in the Seoul Metropolitan Area: Does Transport Serve All Equally?
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
1 August 2023
- Develop people-focused policies to improve accessibility.
- Measure the impacts of policies on access and equity.
- Enable conditions for people-focused transport policies.
The Freight Space Race: Curbing the Impact of Freight Deliveries in Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
5 December 2022
- Manage curb space with a focus on the needs of both passengers and goods transport.
- Apply access restrictions for delivery vehicles in urban areas while considering business practices.
- Use more logistics data to better monitor and manage freight flows.
Streets That Fit: Re-allocating Space for Better Cities
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
16 February 2022
- Adopt meaningful indicators for how urban street space is used.
- Re-allocate street space to account for diverse uses and users.
- Prioritise people over vehicles when allocating street space.
- Explore the benefits of dynamically re-allocating certain street spaces.
- Adopt Safe System principles to guide the re-allocation of street space.
Artificial Intelligence in Proactive Road Infrastructure Safety Management
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
14 December 2021
- Develop a competitive market for the sharing and monetising of traffic and mobility data.
- Do not wait for real-time data before developing risk maps.
- Mandate the sharing of aggregate vehicle data.
- Learn from other fields and best practice for data sharing and privacy protection.
- Support research and innovation towards trusted and explainable AI.
- Align new tools with precise policy objectives.
- Develop new skills and digital infrastructure.
- Clarify regulatory frameworks for data protection and digital security.
- Design user-friendly risk-mapping tools.
Micromobility, Equity and Sustainability
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
5 September 2021
- Base regulation on sustainable urban mobility policy objectives.
- Consult micromobility companies on public policy issues early and often to avoid distorting regulations.
- Apply outcome-based regulations linked to specific performance criteria.
- Ensure limits on market access allow competition; avoid static caps on shared micromobility vehicle fleets.
- Limit data-reporting requirements to information used for mobility planning.
- Set regulatory fees in light of the potential value of micromobility for sustainable mobility and the uncertain viability of business models.
- Support equitable and affordable micromobility services.
- Follow the principle of mode-neutrality when developping an urban transport system.
- Reallocate road and parking space to micromobility users, cyclists and pedestrians.
- Address motor vehicle speeds when regulating micromobility speed.
- Apply coherent regulation that treats micromobility operators equally.
- Adopt a permissive and adaptive regulatory approach to micromobility.
Travel Transitions: How Transport Planners and Policy Makers Can Respond to Shifting Mobility Trends
Research Report, Policy Insights,
16 August 2021
- Scan for emerging travel trends using a combination of traditional and new data sources.
- Measure the performance of the transport system with indicators that reflect how mobility contributes to societal objectives.
- Take a proactive approach to anticipating travel transitions by scanning developments inside and outside the transport sector.
- Account for uncertainty when making predictions and be explicit about the different sources of uncertainty .
- Shift from a “predict and provide” approach towards a “decide and provide” approach in the face of deep uncertainty.
- Change the mindset and enhance the skillset of the transport-planning workforce.
- Foster a strengthening of international knowledge sharing and co-operation via a “learning by doing” approach.
- Adapt transport governance to better account for uncertainty in planning.
Benchmarking Accessibility in Cities
Case-Specific Policy Analysis, Policy Insights,
19 May 2019
- Use the new urban accessibility framework to compare and benchmark cities.
- Improve accessibility by reducing trip lengths and enhancing transport performance.
- Learn from similar cities with higher accessibility scores.
- Collect more and better urban mobility data, notably on walking and cycling.
Integrating Urban Public Transport Systems and Cycling
Roundtable Report, Policy Insights,
25 April 2018
- Design interchange stations to provide secure, uncongested conditions for transfer by the shortest routes possible.
- Provide adequate bike parking areas at stations and stops.
- Integrate ticketing and information systems as well as the physical transport infrastructure.
- Establish integrated urban transport plans in consultation with stakeholders and the public.
Cycling, Health and Safety
Research Report, Policy Insights,
19 December 2013
- Insufficient evidence supports causality for the “safety in numbers” phenomenon – policies increasing the number of cyclists should be accompanied by risk-reduction actions.
- Efforts must be made to harmonise definitions of bicycle accident terminology so as to be able to make reliable international comparisons on cyclist safety.
- National authorities should set standards for, collect or otherwise facilitate the collection of data on non-fatal cycling crashes based on police reports and, in either a systematic or periodic way, on hospital records.
- Authorities seeking to improve cyclists’ safety should adopt the Safe System approach - policy should focus on improving the inherent safety of the traffic system, not simply on securing marginal improvements for cyclists in an inherently unsafe system.
- Authorities should establish top-level plans for cycling and cycling safety and should ensure high-level coordination among relevant government agencies to ensure that cycling grows without aggravating safety performance.
- Speed management acts as “hidden infrastructure” protecting cyclists and should be included as an integral part of cycle safety strategies.
- Cyclists should not be the only target of cycling safety policies – motorists are at least as important to target.
- Where appropriate, traffic speeds should be limited to less than 30km/hr where bicycles and motorised traffic mix but care should be taken so that speed control devices do not create hazards for cyclists.